


got my heartbeat (skipping down sixteenth avenue)

by cosmicwritings



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: F/M, MJCU (Michelle Jones Cinematic Universe), i cannot be Bothered to tag more characters, never going to stop using that tag for her! it's what she deserves!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 22:34:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20415394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicwritings/pseuds/cosmicwritings
Summary: "She lets go and leans back in her seat again. Her head bumps against the window behind her as she angles herself to glance at Peter, watching his head bob to the music. It’s cute. He catches her looking and smiles, a soft curve to his lips that she has to force herself to look away, lest she does something stupid like kiss him. She focuses on a spot near his shoulder, so she can still look at him from the corner of her eye. It’s like the sun. You don’t look at it directly in the eye because it’s dangerous."or everyone knows peter and mj have been dating for months. except maybe mj.





	got my heartbeat (skipping down sixteenth avenue)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [inside your neon shrine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20175709) by [andtimestoodstill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andtimestoodstill/pseuds/andtimestoodstill). 

> god i’m on a fucking ROLL lately huh this is my fourth fic this summer that i’ve finished i’m !! shocked with myself tbh fdjghd anyways this is 11k of teenagers being stupid as fuck, surprise surprise ! this is ? probably au like i don’t include anything about the rest of the mcu (except maybe mentions about pepper and morgan and happy once or twice?) and they’re like 18 & seniors in this. you absolutely do not have to read my last petermj (mj centric) fic for this to make sense but it might give u a lil more background about mj in this fic? idk whatever floats ur boat, let me know if u like this ! also i absolutely did not write this in order so if it feels like scenes jammed together dfjkghd it IS
> 
> shoutout to @andtimestoodstill for letting me use the “i didn’t know we were dating” plot from their ‘the devil made me do it’ series ! it’s wonderful and perfect for pynch <3
> 
> title from 'i think he knows' by taylor swift ! stream lover u cowards
> 
> EDIT: i’m the world’a biggest mess so i had to come back and correct my science joke so uh rip to if you read it before i changed it & didn’t say anything, i’m useless cjdhwiwhs follow me on tumblr @blaisezabini for more of my dumbassery!

“I thought we were _done_ with all this,” Flash says, eyes rolling.

Michelle pretends she doesn’t hear him and reshuffled her cards loudly. Smarter men would take that as a hint, but unfortunately, Flash isn’t one of them.

“We’re seniors now, I thought Parker stopped the skipping thing in sophomore year.” He’s not even on _stage_. Michelle’s about to start drilling Ned, Sally, Cindy and Abe, who are sitting at the table on stage. Flash is meant to be looking over the music section before his turn, and she’s about to tell him that in her best Captain-voice, before someone else chimes in.

“I hate agreeing with Flash,” Cindy says, and Michelle zeroes on her with her glare instead. She doesn’t flinch. “Like I hate it. It’s one of my least favourite things. But why is Peter missing _another_ practice without explanation?”

Next to her, Sally is nodding, and Michelle raises her eyebrows. _Et tu, Brute?_

Ned is suddenly very interested in something on his phone.

Of course Flash latches onto this, a hand pumping the air in victory that people are listening to them. Christ. “Ha! See! I know you’re close to him, MJ, but this is, like. Nepotism.”

Everyone in the room winces, and he realises a half-second too late that he might have taken it a bit far.

Michelle lowers her cards and jabs a finger in his direction. Flash decidedly does not take a step back. “First of all. MJ?”

“Captain,” Flash amends quickly.

“Secondly,” she continues, like she didn’t hear him. She raises the flash cards again. “Accuse me of nepotism again and I’ll bench you for the rest of the year. It’ll be our third year in a row, you don’t want to miss _that_.”

Flash opens his mouth, probably to retort because he has some kind of death wish, but then the door of the room slams open and Peter falls through, running in at a breakneck speed.

“I’m here, Mr Harrington! Sorry, I got held up, there was – anyway, I’m here, I’m here, I promise.” Peter pants and Michelle squints at him. He’s wheezing like he’s been running for a while, but Michelle’s been friends with the loser for two years now. She knows when he’s faking.

The others seem to buy it though, and Cindy looks like she’s changing her mind about demanding where Peter was. She’s lost interest in the whole situation and has gone back to rolling her eyes at Flash, which. Fair.

Peter skids to a stop in front of Michelle and looks around. “Where’s Mr Harrington?”

“Dentist appointment,” she says, and then has to look away or she’d be staring. Whatever. “He said he’d be back before practice ended. You’re late, by the way.”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” he says. He sounds like he means it. Michelle wants to punch a wall. “I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”

There’s snickering from the stage, and Michelle pretends she doesn’t see Sally and Cindy giggling to each other. Flash has a smug look on his face, which makes her want to smack him, but she doesn’t. She’s Captain, after all. “Whatever, nerd. Go sit down. Flash, I changed my mind, I’m going to test you first, so I hope you finished reading that book.”

From his spluttering, he hasn’t. Good. Serves him right.

* * *

On Wednesdays, after Decathlon practice, Peter walks her home because Ned has to go pick up his little sister from gymnastics. Every week, he helps her pack away the chairs and rearrange the tables, and then he walks her to the subway, gets on the subway towards her home, and then switches to the subway going back the way he came because he lives in the opposite direction and she won’t let him walk her all the way to her own door.

She wouldn’t let him take this journey with her every Wednesday either, but she catches a glimpse of red swinging from the rooftops the first time she declined, so she resigned herself to the fact that Peter just likes making sure she’s home safe.

Friends do that. That’s a thing, she’s pretty sure. She didn’t really have friends before Peter, before Ned, before the team, but Sally and Cindy and Abe all walk home together and Ned does it sometimes for her too.

(Ned also does it for Betty Brant, when Betty claims she has to be at some of the Decathlon practices for ‘journalistic reasons’, but Michelle also knows Ned has a thing for Betty. He doesn’t deny it. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and it’s something she sometimes envies.)

So when Peter’s done stacking the chairs after this practice, and she’s finished rearranging her flash cards because there’s no point in overexerting her own energy if she knows he can lift all the chairs by himself without breaking a sweat, he swings his rucksack over his shoulder and says, “Ready to go?”

Michelle nods and says goodbye to Mr Harrington, falling into step next to Peter like it’s something familiar.

Okay, here’s a truth: Michelle really likes these moments every week, when it’s just her and Peter. It has everything to do with the stupid crush she has on him, has had on him for years now – but it’s the kind of crush that buzzes in the background like an annoying fly. It doesn’t really ever go away and gets a little louder every time he laughs at something she says. Talking to Peter is easier than breathing and, sometimes, they’ll talk about things that she wouldn’t tell anyone else, like letting slip about her family or discussing the future.

“All right, I want your real opinion. In a zombie apocalypse, where’s the best place to hide in the school?”

Other times, they just discuss complete and utter shit.

If you asked Michelle, she couldn’t tell you which conversations she’d preferred, which is tragic in and of itself.

Peter’s looking ahead thoughtfully, like he’s genuinely thinking hard about the hypothetical question he’s just asked her. He probably is. She bumps her shoulder against his and says, “The science lab’s store cupboard.”

“That’s oddly specific,” he says, eyebrows raised. Then, he thinks it over. “Really? Not just the actual science lab?”

“_Why_ the science lab?”

“To blow things up when it comes down to it,” he says like it’s obvious.

“I can do that in the store cupboard, dork,” she points out. “_And_ it’s smaller space, better at hiding so I won’t _need_ to blow shit up.”

His face contorts again as he thinks harder, and his steps falter behind just a little. She doesn’t pause for him, so when he speeds back up, he adds, “Our store cupboard is _tiny_. We couldn’t fit the both of us in there _and_ Ned.”

“Who says I’m giving up my hiding space for you?” she deadpans, but it makes Peter laugh. “Mm, actually, maybe I’d let Ned in.”

“You would?”

“I like Ned better than you,” she says.

He raises a hand and places it across his heart, as if wounded. “Ouch.”

“He let me have his extra doughnut the other day.”

“I gave him the doughnuts!”

She pretends she doesn’t hear him as she goes down the stairs into the subway. “Besides, you wouldn’t be hiding in a zombie apocalypse.”

“I wouldn’t?” he says curiously.

She thinks about Spiderman. She thinks about he hasn’t told her yet, _still_, after being friends for two years. She says, “Nah, you’d want to throw yourself out there to fight them for us.”

He doesn’t deny it. He jokes, “Yep, the zombies will take one look at me and run.”

“In all your five foot seven glory,” she throws back, squinting at the board for the train times.

“Hey! I’m five foot eight!”

She laughs as their train pulls up on time, stepping in and plopping herself down in a seat. It’s fairly empty, with practice having run overtime, so he takes the seat next to her. He fidgets with the strap on his bag.

“All right, show me,” she says, turning towards him in her seat. It comes out tired, the way her natural tone always does, but her lips are quirked.

“What?”

“Whatever it is you saw that made you think of zombie apocalypses,” she says, rolling her eyes. Sometimes, she hates how well she knows him, but this is what she gets for observing him since freshman year. This is what she gets for being his friend now. “I want to see.”

“You’re going to think I’m a loser.” He’s ducking his head, shy suddenly, but fumbles for his phone in his pocket.

“I already think you’re a loser,” she says, and if it comes out fondly, well. No one can prove it. “Let me see.”

“It’s a song, actually.” He shoves his headphones into his phone and offers her one of the earbuds. She takes it and he puts the other in his own ear, pressing play.

“I don’t know why you were embarrassed, that was a cool song,” Michelle admits once it ends, tilting her head to the side to squint at him. She pulls out her earbud.

He’s still looking at his phone, a little bashful, and says, “Uh. Let’s say hypothetically that song inspired me to make an entire zombie apocalypse playlist.”

Christ, she can’t believe she likes him this much.

She pops the earbud back in, closes her eyes. “Go on then. And turn it up.”

The train journey really isn’t that long, so they’re in the middle of the third song he plays when she opens her eyes again, noting that her stop is next. She’s actually really liking this one and grabs his wrist to tilt the phone screen towards her. _Blood in the Cut_, K.Flay. Nice.

She lets go and leans back in her seat again. Her head bumps against the window behind her as she angles herself to glance at Peter, watching his head bob to the music. It’s cute. He catches her looking and smiles, a soft curve to his lips that she has to force herself to look away, lest she does something stupid like_ kiss him_. She focuses on a spot near his shoulder, so she can still look at him from the corner of her eye. It’s like the sun. You don’t look at it directly in the eye because it’s _dangerous_.

As the chorus starts up again, she can feel her own head nodding to the beat, catchy and thrumming in her veins. The rumbling of the train matches the beat for a moment, almost drowning out the screech as the subway starts to slow down.

When she looks back at Peter, pulling out her earbud, he’s grinning widely at her. And she can’t help it, all right? She flashes her own teeth at him in a smile for half-a-second, before ducking her head.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then?” he says eagerly.

She’s thinking that they have school tomorrow, so, yeah? But says, “Okay,” because Peter is a little weird too, gets excited about weird things.

“And I can text you about hanging out tomorrow.”

_That_ startles her a little bit. She pauses as she stands up, picking up her bag.

“If that’s okay with you,” he adds, nervous, fingers fidgeting, eyes blinking.

So she says, “Yeah, cool,” because it’s not like she _does_ have plans tomorrow after school. It’s not unusual. She can hang out with her friends on a Thursday.

He grins again, all teeth, and stands up to follow her off the train. When she walks up the stairs to get out, she glances back and he waves at her from the platform, about to get on the train back. She doesn’t wave back, just keeps walking out.

* * *

**from: loser #2**  
do u like ice skating

**from: mj *crown emoji***  
is that a trick question?

**from: loser #2**  
ha! no i mean for tmrw after school, do u wanna do ice skating

**from: mj *crown emoji***  
yeah sure

**from: loser #2**  
:-)

The entire next day at school, Peter’s fidgety and unable to stay still, and she finds him watching her more than once throughout the day.

At lunch, Ned mentions that his sister has got a gymnastic competition after school, where she has a whole routine that she refuses to show him as a surprise, and Michelle tells him to wish her luck. Peter’s still staring at her, enough so that Ned has to nudge him in the ribs, and he blinks and says that he wishes her luck too. Michelle ignores him and finishes reading her book.

She’s just slammed her locker shut, books stuffed into her backpack, ready to head out of school for the day, when Peter suddenly appears next to her as she’s walking.

“Is six o’clock a good time for you today?” he says, a little skip in his step. “I can pick you up at quarter to.”

“You don’t need to do that,” she says, looking at him strangely. “Six is fine. I can make my own way there.”

“I thought I would walk us over to the mall from yours,” he explains.

She blows a lock of her hair from her face. “That makes no sense. You’re closer to the mall than I am. I can just meet you there.”

He looks like he might argue for a moment, but then he thinks about it and relents, “Well, if you’re sure that’s what you want.”

Outside the school gates, she turns right and waves at him over her shoulder, “See you at six, loser.”

She gets to the mall’s ice rink closer to quarter past six, but only because she got caught up reading a new book in her bed and looked at the clock too late. She’d hurriedly switched out of her sweatpants into jeans and ran out the door, pulling her hair out of its bun on the way.

When Peter sees her, sitting on the side chewing at his lip, he grins and bounds up. “Hey! I thought you weren’t going to show.”

“Don’t be silly, I would’ve told you. I just lost track of time.” She follows him to the counter, head tilted. “Have you ever been ice skating?”

“Oh, yeah, May’s a pro. She takes me every year.”

She’s about to reply but gets distracted when he pulls out his money to pay. For a moment, there’s a struggle as she argues with him, but he doesn’t budge, and she eventually gives up and tells him that she owes him a coffee.

“I thought ice skating was about hand-eye co-ordination,” she continues when they’re pulling on their boots. He gives her a questioning look and she adds, “You said you bumped into a door the other day when Abe asked why you had a bruise on your shoulder.”

The tips of his ears burn red, as well as his cheeks. “Uh.”

Like. The thing is. She knows he’s Spiderman, but he doesn’t really know she knows, so it’s kind of funny watching him stumble along like this. Taking pity of him, she stands up, wobbling a little as she grabs onto the side of the rink and shuffles towards the door. “Come on, dork, show me what you got.”

She kind of hates that he _is_ good at ice skating, especially when the best she can do is move without falling over. She’s just gliding along, and he’s there, doing a spin every now and then, and she has a feeling he’s holding back anyway, the way he does during gym.

“Keep up, MJ,” he says from ahead, mostly because he’s a shit, judging by the way he’s grinning at her.

Ice skating wasn’t supposed to something you needed any athletic abilities for, she thought – which, _good_, because she didn’t have any. But Peter makes these tricks seem easier than walking and he’s taunting her to catch up with him.

Her balance wobbles for a second as she hesitantly changes her groove to stick one of her legs out further, the way she’d seen him do only moments before. Except, it’s not working as smoothly as when he did it, because she’s trying to use the momentum of her other leg to swing herself into a spin too, and it’s _harder_ than it looks.

She gets maybe _half_ a spin in, when the foot she’s balancing on wobbles. She can feel a disaster happening which ends up with her flat-faced on the ice, so she tries to straighten up, and then there’s a hand at her elbow.

“That counts as a spin,” she says, a little breathless at the effort and not at all by the proximity of their faces. She uses his arm to straighten herself up properly.

His eyes are bright. “Mm, if you say so.” He doesn’t let go of her arm, so she doesn’t let go of his, and if you ever asked her – well. She wanted him to go at the same pace as her.

He walks her home afterwards, because it’s _dark_ now.

“You’ll have to walk home yourself after in the dark – you don’t think I can handle myself?” She doesn’t mean it, but it’s fun to watch him panic.

“You most definitely can handle yourself,” he assures her, then opens and closes his mouth a few times. He’s trying to think of a way to explain he’s safer than her in the dark because he’s _Spiderman_.

“I’m just kidding,” she says, laughing at him, and he smiles, relieved.

When they get to her door, he stops in front of it when she does.

He shifts from one foot to the other, like he wants to say something, but he won’t. She waits. Finally, he says, “Did you have fun?”

She almost laughs at him, but he looks nervous, like he really wants to know. So she smiles and says, “Yeah, dork.”

“Okay, I’m gonna—” He gestures back at the street, towards the direction of his home.

She nods, and then he quickly leans forward, upwards a little to reach her, to kiss her cheek. Just quickly, a quick brush of his mouth.

“Was that – Is that okay?” he says, pulling back, eyes wide and anxious.

She can’t really do anything except nod. Turns and opens her front door to step in without saying goodbye, but Peter knows her by now – it’s not strange for her to abruptly leave, not a fan of pleasantries.

She doesn’t lean against her front door once she’s closed it, because she’s not a cliché. Nope. She calmly walks to her room and drops her bag on her chair and _then_ lies on her bed to overthink.

The more she thinks about it, the less weird it actually is. Peter’s an affectionate boy; this is not news to her. He has an overly complicated handshake with Ned, hugs him at least once a day. Sometimes, he’ll ask if it’s okay to hold her hand in a big crowd and, when she says yes, grabs Ned’s as well with his other one so they don’t get split up. He squeezes her shoulder when he leaves, like an absent-minded gesture. He picks up Morgan Stark when he sees her and hugs her, spins her around without fail, ducks into a one-armed hug from Mrs Potts. He kisses May on the cheek when he gets home and before he goes out. This isn’t weird. Peter’s always been tactile with the people he loves, and she’s secure in herself that she knows she’s upgraded on that list over the last few years. She’s one of his best friends. It makes sense.

She pushes a pillow against her face. Life was so much easier when she wasn’t thinking about Peter constantly.

* * *

“Did you have a nice time yesterday?” Ned says when she sits down for lunch. Peter’s being held back by their English teacher for missing homework; she had laughed at him on the way out of the classroom.

She looks at him suspiciously, but she can see on his face that it’s a genuine question. For a moment, she thought Ned might know about her crush on Peter. Like her fondness somehow broke past the blank exterior she puts up. Taking a bite of her apple, she says, “Yeah.”

Ned lets out a puff of breath, like he’s relieved. “Good,” he says, smiling.

She’s already lost interest in this conversation. It wasn’t even interesting to start with. She opens her book with one hand. “Maybe you should come next time.”

She means it. Hanging out with Peter by himself is maybe one of her favourite things these days (no, she doesn’t want to talk about it), but it’s kind of hard to keep reminding herself not to kiss him when there’s just the two of them. And she likes hanging out with Ned, too. These two are her favourite people, even if she doesn’t really say it.

“I thought you had a nice time yesterday.”

“I did,” she says, paying more attention to the book than the boy opposite her. She can see him giving her a strange look anyway, because she’s good at multi-tasking.

“And you want me to come along next time?”

“I mean, if you want. It was fun. I don’t want you to feel left out.”

“_Oh_,” Ned says like he understands. She turns the page. “Oh. Nah, I don’t feel left out. Don’t worry about that.”

She hums and he doesn’t say anything else, just eats his lunch in companionable silence.

* * *

On Saturday, Peter texts her in the morning to ask if she wants to come over to study. When she arrives two hours later, May passes her on the way out to a work shift and tells her Peter’s just run out to buy some toilet roll, but she can go on in to his room.

By the time she can hear the front door open again, she calls out to him from his room so she doesn’t startle him.

A second later, he pops his head around hid bedroom door to find her sitting on his chair, deeply engrossed in a book.

“Where’s Ned?” Michelle says in lieu of a hello, glancing up at him.

He gives her a strange look and says that Ned’s with his family today.

“Oh.”

“I mean, I can give him a call and see if he’s done with the family stuff to come over, if you’d like,” he offers.

“No, it’s all right,” she says with a shake of her head, and then resumes reading.

A moment later, he steps into the room and sits, cross-legged in front of her on the floor, but not before leaning in to give her another kiss on the cheek. She successfully does not blush. Ha. Take that, teenage body filled with hormones.

She doesn’t look up from her book.

Peter doesn’t say anything, which is strange because he always has something to say to her. She doesn’t flick her gaze up from her page, but she can feel his nervous energy vibrating from here.

She makes him wait as she finishes her page. When she’s done, she bookmarks it, closes it and finally looks up. “What’s up?”

He blinks, startled, which she doesn’t really get, because she knows he’s been staring at her this whole time. His eyes widen like he’s been caught, but she just raises an eyebrow. “Nothing. Nothing.”

“We’re meant to be studying. And all you’re doing is _staring_. So?”

“Nothing!” he says again.

She raises the other eyebrow.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” he confesses. His hands are fiddling with the strings of his hoodie, but he doesn’t look away. In fact, there’s a determined set in his jaw and he’s looking at her pretty intensely – if there was one person in the entire universe that could make her want to back down from such a stare-off, it would be Peter.

She’s not saying that she does break the eye contact in panic. Only that she _could’ve_.

“So tell me,” she says, raising her chin a little at him.

He opens his mouth, and then closes it. His eyes are tracking her face, like he’s searching for something, and Michelle doesn’t know what. He opens his mouth again, but only a nervous laugh comes out. “Sorry. This is harder than I thought.”

She thinks maybe he can hear her heart pounding against her chest, or the blood rushing against her pulse. It’s all she can hear, anyway, the sound of her own body feeling something heavy in this moment.

He’s still looking at her, and for a moment, she _thinks_ this might be the pinpoint of something changing in their relationship. It makes sense, right? They’ve been dancing around this thing between them for a long time – at least, she thinks they have. Sometimes Peter looks at her like _this_, and it’s hard to think he does not feel the same way about her as she does with him. Except she’s not going to be the _first_ to admit it, because that’s stupid, she wants to be sure that he likes her first, so maybe this is it. Maybe this is the time, when there’s no one else around, except him and her and this atmosphere that feels like they’re on the precipice of something.

He blinks, and she’s watching his eyelashes flutter against his cheekbone. He wets his lips, and she’s watching his mouth. He takes a deep breath, and she’s watching his throat bob.

Maybe, just maybe –

“I’m Spiderman.”

Oh.

_Oh_.

Right, okay. Never mind.

There’s a long pause as Michelle tries to rearrange her thoughts. Actually, she’s scolding herself for getting caught up in being a stupid teenager, like what is she doing? Who is she? How did she get to this point?

“MJ, say something,” comes Peter’s voice, high-pitched in his nerves.

She pulls herself out of her thoughts for a moment to wave a hand dismissively. “Oh. That. Yeah, no, I know.”

“You know?” he says, eyes bulging.

If she wasn’t so embarrassed, she’d have found it funny. As it is, she can only nod.

He opens his mouth and closes it again, eyebrows knitted together. She can see his brain working to process it. “Did Ned tell you?”

She scoffs. “Ned didn’t tell me anything. I worked it out on my own. You can’t think that I’m this close to you and _not_ have worked it out by now. Hello? I’m the captain of our Decathlon team.”

“That’s. That’s fair, to be honest,” he says, considering it. In the next moment, he’s grinning at her, white teeth almost blinding. “I just wanted you to know, you know. Like. You’re important to me. You’re my – Well, if we’re – I just. I wanted you to know.”

She’s pouring gasoline over that disappointed feeling inside her from minutes before, lighting a match and setting it on fire, stamping on the ashes of that shit. It’s hard to feel anything negative right now when Peter is looking at her like _that_ again and saying things that make her chest want to burst.

* * *

Peter seems to take the whole ‘_I know you’re Spiderman_’ thing as an invitation to swing by her window.

About a year ago, she’d let Peter and Ned inside her home because they’d been curious and because there’s really nothing there to show. They won’t really understand the reason she hates it, because the place is nice. Empty, when they come over, like it always is – but they’re getting a snapshot of what has been Michelle’s whole life. She can tell them about how much she doesn’t like being here because of the silence, but they won’t really get it. So she shows them her home, lets them sit on her bedroom floor as they try to find something here that’s _MJ_.

They don’t come over again and it’s not because she won’t let them, but because they know her now and won’t push at boundaries, even if they don’t really get it. But her place isn’t out of bounds anymore, it’s just something that never really comes up.

She’s on her laptop at her table, hair pulled into a messy bun and in a thick jumper, when she looks up to see a red figure at her window.

(She shrieks, and then later pretends she never did. She knocks over a pen and doesn’t bother to pick it up.)

“What the _fuck_?” is what she says when she flaps her hand at him to move away from the window so she can open it.

“Hey, MJ,” Peter says from behind the mask, like it’s normal. He’s sticking to the wall outside her window when she sticks her head out. She’s on the _ninth_ floor.

“Come in, dork,” she sighs, and he only hesitates for a moment before he crawls through her open window.

“What’re you doing?” he says cheerfully, moving towards her laptop that’s still opened. It’s a little weird to be talking to Peter through his mask, but whatever.

“The history assignment,” she replies. “Which I’m assuming you haven’t done. Or even started.”

“Oops?” he says, without really meaning it.

“Don’t come to _me_ the day before it’s due, asking for help,” she says, but she knows that’s exactly what will happen. And she’ll make him stress about it for a few hours before helping.

He spins back around to look at her, eyes widening in what she _knows_ is a pouting expression behind the mask. Then, he gets distracted and looks around the room. “Huh. It’s so weird to be in my suit in someone else’s bedroom that’s not mine. Ned doesn’t let me swing by his because he says that someone in his family will most definitely see me if I do. His parents don’t believe in locks on doors or something.”

“I know,” Michelle reminds him.

“Is your brother home?” he asks, nodding at her closed bedroom door.

She shakes her head, even though she thinks he knows the answer anyway. Elias is never home. “No.”

“Cool. I didn’t want you to be lonely, so I thought I’d swing by for a bit,” and then makes himself comfortable in the chair that she was _just_ sitting in.

She sighs and grabs up her laptop so she can sit on the bed instead, aware of him watching her from the chair. “I’m not lonely. Don’t you have crime to stop or something?”

“Eh, it can wait, kind of a slow day,” he says and picks up the pen she dropped on the floor earlier.

She most definitely does not smile behind her laptop screen.

* * *

He starts swinging by every time he’s patrolling, mostly at the end of his patrol, but sometimes halfway through instead. He stays for a few hours or a few minutes, but he always comes by to see her when she’s in her bedroom.

“What do you when I’m not here?” she asks once, after he’s just stuck his head in to say hello and see what she’s doing. After the first time, she leaves her window unlocked for him and he keeps telling her _not_ to do that, which she ignores because there’s no one else but friendly neighbourhood Spiderman who intentionally climbs up the side of a building to the ninth floor.

“I swing by, and if I see your light on or something, I’ll tap on your window,” he says, like it’s obvious. “If you’re not in, I just carry on my patrol.”

“Stalker.”

He sputters, “I’m not a stalker! It’s not a crime to just want to visit my – Well, you.”

It’s only been two hours since he started patrol for the day, she knows because he mentioned it when he was texting her earlier, so she isn’t really expecting him to stop for long. Last night, he swung by at midnight when he was done, and he sat on her floor whilst she sat on her bed and stayed up talking until two am, when May texted him asking where he was.

“I don’t mind it,” she says, and it sounds like a confession. The eyeholes on his mask widen slightly, which makes her flush. She busies herself by picking up a jug she keeps on her desk to water her cactus.

“You don’t mind it?” he teases, trying to coax more out of her.

“I’ll push you out of the window,” she threatens. He’s got one hand on the top of her windowsill from the outside to keep himself up.

He opens his mouth to say something, but there’s a police siren in the far distance and he looks up instinctively towards it.

“Go,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“See you tomorrow, ma’am,” he says, in that horrible fake accent he does to mask up his high-pitched voice, and then he’s gone.

* * *

Peter keeps doing this cheek-kissing thing, and it’s not a big deal, she knows. It’s definitely not a big deal, but then he starts stealing her clothes as well and she doesn’t have a problem with that, per se, only it’s a thing that happens now.

His presence in her room is simultaneously the worst and best decision she’s ever made. At first, it’s just a hoodie when he’s cold that she throws at him, but sometimes he wants to hang out with her for a few hours.

“Isn’t that Spidey suit uncomfortable for hours at a time?” she says once, when he’s sitting cross-legged on her floor and she’s on her bed again.

“Nah, actually, it’s not that bad.”

“It’s _spandex_.” She stands up, going over to her drawers and pulls out a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. “Here.”

“You really don’t have to –”

“You’re not sitting on my bed in something that you regularly wear to fight people in,” she says flatly. He takes the clothes to change into.

Except, like. He starts to steal it? And she’ll see him in school sometimes in one of her hoodies or something, so that’s. That’s fine. Cool. They’re at the stage of friendship where they share clothes now.

When she starts wearing his clothes, she doesn’t _steal_ it. He’ll make her wear his jacket when he walks her home and is convinced it’s too cold. She always tries giving it back, but he shakes his head and refuses to take it back, so she just gives up. If she spills juice on herself or something when she’s at his place, he’ll toss one of his t-shirts at her, slightly too short at the torso, but impressively loose around the shoulders.

She’s _telling_ herself that this thing is not a big deal, none of this was, it’s Peter being Peter, except one time she’s at Decathlon practice and readjusting her hair into a bun when her hairband snaps. She swears loudly, but then Peter rolls back his sleeve to hand her a hair tie he’s keeping on his wrist, and somewhere on the stage, someone giggles.

She takes it without comment.

The next time she’s in his room, she takes the opportunity to go through his desk when he’s in the bathroom and, sure enough, there’s a new packet of hair ties scattered behind a photo frame of him and May.

She doesn’t say anything about it. She won’t.

* * *

Peter’s place is kind of their favourite place to hang out, because Michelle hates her home and Ned’s always got so many people at his at any given time. May doesn’t mind them over all the time; on the contrary, she embraces it, and Michelle hasn’t had another maternal figure since she was six, but that’s another story and another can of worms to open.

Ned’s persuaded Peter to build the Lego Death Star for the fiftieth time, undeterred by the valiant amount of attempts they’ve tried and been interrupted, so Michelle pulls out her book and sits in the corner of Peter’s room and lets their excited talk act as a white noise as she reads.

Of course, the curse of the Lego Death Star means they’re only halfway through building when Ned’s phone rings and it’s his mother telling him that his grandmother is visiting earlier, and he needs to go home.

Ned whines, but once his mother hangs up, he starts gathering all his things together. The two boys look mournfully at their half-finished masterpiece.

“We can finish it another time,” Peter says with optimism, before he walks Ned to the door to bid him goodbye.

When he comes back to his room, he finds Michelle lying flat on the floor, the book she’s meant to be reading placed open on her face.

“Uh, MJ?”

She sighs. “What?” Her voice is muffled, like her nose is clogged. Or because there’s a book on her face.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.” _No_.

“There’s a book on your face.”

“To block you out,” she says, moving the book so she can look at him to scowl. Except then she has a coughing fit, and he’s moved closer in a split-second. As if on instinct, he rests his hand on her forehead, and she does her best not to flinch at the sudden contact.

He notices and withdraws, face pulled into something apologetic. “Sorry. I think you’re ill.”

“I’m _not_.”

“You have a fever.”

“_Do_ I?” She sounds petulant, she knows. He looks funny like this, sideways and worried.

“I think we’ve got some soup, if you want. The shop-bought kind, not anything May makes. She bought it before she went for her shift today.”

“I’m –” she protests, sitting up. The world spins for a moment. “Okay, yeah, maybe soup would be great.”

Relief floods his face and she rolls her eyes. He bounds to his feet with all the energy only Peter ever has. “You can lie on my bed, it’ll be comfier than the floor. Do you need help getting on it?”

“_No_,” she says firmly. She ignores the dizziness and throws herself on his bed, decidedly not looking at him. She’s 95% sure he’s hovering to make sure she doesn’t collapse or whatever, which is sweet, but_ not necessary_. “See.”

“All right, great! I’ll be back in a moment, hold on.” He ducks out of the room to heat up the soup, so she closes her eyes.

When she hears him come back, she opens her eyes to him holding a bowl and a spoon.

“If you think about offering to feed me, I will gut you with that spoon.”

“I wasn’t!” he says hurriedly, and then pushes the soup towards her.

She doesn’t quite smile, but there’s a quirk at the corner of her lips as she takes it. “Thanks. I don’t think I’ve had soup for the sick before, so I can cross it off my bucket list.”

When she tells him about her home life in bits and pieces, haltingly, like the words get caught in her throat, Peter listens and never presses. Right now, he moves to sit crossed-legged by her on the bed.

“What do you usually do when you’re ill, then?”

“I don’t.”

“What?”

She coughs violently, moving the bowl aside. He hands her a tissue. “I don’t get ill.”

“Well. Clearly you _do_.”

“You’re not funny when I’m in perfect health, and you’re not funny now.” Her brain is not working properly at all, so her glare at him is weak, at best. She pretends he doesn’t grin at her. “My immune system is usually scared of me.”

“Like Rosa from Brooklyn Nine-Nine?”

_God, I love you_, she almost says, but stops herself in time. Thank fuck. “Yeah.”

“I wish that was me.” He pauses, thinking about it. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I can’t get ill anymore.”

“Spidey?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, whoop-di-fucking-do, for you,” she says, sticking her tongue out at him. He pulls a face back.

* * *

It’s almost one in the morning when she hears a tap and then her window creaking open. She’s in bed, but not sleeping because her sleeping schedule is fucked, like most other high school seniors. She places the book she’s reading on her bedside table and flicks on her bedroom light.

He pulls the mask off his face when he lands on her floor, leaning against her desk, and she’s grateful, because she likes it better when she’s seeing Peter’s face, not Spiderman’s.

She almost changes her mind when she gets a good look in the light and sees a bruise, bright purple, across the left side of his jaw and a bleeding cut on his temple.

“Do you have a concussion?” is the first thing she says, because it’s the first thing that comes to her mind when she sees head injuries.

He huffs out a laugh, and she can’t really see what’s funny about this situation. “Nah, it looks worse than it is. I heal super-fast, though. The bruise will be gone completely by tomorrow afternoon.”

She moves forward to stand in front of him. He’s slightly shorter than her normally, which she likes, and leaning against her desk takes him down a few more inches. Her hand hovers over the bruise on his jaw for a moment, not wanting to touch it, but also wanting to do exactly that. He raises his own hand to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear.

“It doesn’t hurt that much anymore,” he assures her, so she gently pokes her finger at him, and he winces. “Except when you do that.”

She removes her hand and trails her gaze up to the graze on his forehead instead. “Hey, you know what, I think that might need stitches. It looks pretty deep.”

“It’ll heal.”

“Yeah, but it’ll heal quicker if it was stitched up.” She takes a step back and doesn’t realise how close she was until she does so. Ducking out of the room for a second, she grabs the first-aid kit in her bathroom and returns. “I can’t believe you’re making me play doctor for you.”

“You don’t have to, I’ll be fine –”

“I’m joking, Parker, relax,” she says, and then nudges him towards her bed. “Sit. I can stitch it up for you.”

He does as he’s told, and she moves to sit opposite him so she can begin cleaning out his wound.

“Where did you learn to do stitches?” he says, because he is incapable of being quiet.

“Why would you ask me questions when I’ve got a needle so close to your face?” she demands, eyebrows knitted in concentration. “I fell off my bike last year some time and I couldn’t be bothered to go to the hospital.”

“So you decided to stitch yourself up?”

“Youtube is _helpful_. And I’m a quick learner.”

“This isn’t helping me with trusting you to do needlework on my face.”

“Isn’t it?” she says and tilts her head at him, squinting. She uses a pair of scissors to snip at the thread. “Because I’m done.”

“That was quick.” Immediately, he raises a hand to feel his forehead, but she seizes his wrist.

“Don’t ruin my hard work,” she says, offended. “I _told_ you I was a quick learner.”

Peter’s kind of staring at her again, and now that she’s not got her focus on keeping the needle straight, she’s suddenly aware of how _close_ she is to him right now. Her hand is still wrapped his wrist and both their arms drop, but she doesn’t let go.

He blinks. She thinks she could count every eyelash right now if she wanted to, could tell you every shade of colour in his eyes, but she won’t because that’s embarrassing.

Her heart is thumping rapidly against her ribcage, she can _feel_ it, so when she gulps, it’s the loudest thing in the silence. She thinks it’s unfair that his Spidey senses can probably hear her heartbeat going erratic, but then feels his pulse through the hand that’s still gripping his wrist and it’s like their bodies are trying to beat out an irregular duet together.

She licks her lips and swallows again, mouth very dry, and she’s holding his gaze, so she knows exactly the moment his eyes flicker down to her lips.

And she panics. It’s like something pulls the hairpin trigger that collapses whatever fear is being held in the back of her throat for this moment, for this, to be sitting here on her bed, only centimetres away from Peter’s face. He’s about to kiss her, she knows this. She’s an observer and every sign right now point to the fact that Peter’s about to kiss her, but she is suddenly overwhelmed and reels back, hand releasing his wrist.

He blinks as she stands up abruptly. Her hands are shaking and there’s no way of hiding it, he can see it as clearly as she can, but he doesn’t say anything because he’s _Peter_.

“May will be wondering where you are,” she says, voice wobbly and hoarse, like it hasn’t been used. There’s too much emotion bled into those words, and she can’t handle it, she really, _really_ can’t handle this.

Thankfully, he nods and he stands up too, pulling his mask back on.

When he leaves, she collapses into her bed and teaches herself to breathe again. For a moment there, she was going to kiss him. She’s been wanting to kiss him for such a long time, and he was going to lean in, she knows he was. But there’s something about eighteen years old and still terrified of her own emotions that stops her, makes her want to choke on her panic.

* * *

They’re sitting on the couch in front of his TV, her feet kicked up into his lap. She’s come over to watch a film, but she’d scrolled through his Netflix and wrinkled her nose at the options he’s put on his list.

(Ned’s Netflix, actually.)

And, because he’s Peter, he of course just laughs and leans over to put on a murder documentary he’s got queued up from _somewhere_, like he knew she was going to hate all the film choices.

When May had come out of her room to go to the kitchen, she glanced at the TV and says, “Peter, why are you watching this? I thought it gave you nightmares.”

“It does not give me nightmares!” he says, horrified and shooing his aunt away.

Michelle raises an eyebrow.

“It does not!”

May laughs and ruffles his hair as she passes the couch towards the kitchen.

Michelle raises her other eyebrow, and he says, “Okay, so I used to be freaked out about it and I won’t let May put on horror movies. But that’s different to this! This is interesting.”

“We don’t have to watch something just because I like it,” she says. He’s wearing one of her hoodies that he stole from her on one of his visits at night as Spiderman, and it’s tight around his shoulders but too long on him. It’s cute.

“We’re not. I like watching the things you watch, they’re really good,” he says earnestly, and she kicks him a little because she doesn’t quite know what to say.

They mostly watch in silence, though Peter seems to be unable to do so in long intervals, so every now and then he’ll say something. Michelle has a strict rule of no one talking when they’re watching something (or she would have, had she watched things with other people), but it’s kind of endearing to hear his train of thought at random times.

“Ned would like this,” he says at one point.

She scoffs, “Ned would _hate_ this.”

“He’d think the earthquake and stuff would be cool,” he corrects, eyes on the screen. His hands are absent-mindedly on her leg.

She concedes to that. She resists the urge to swing her legs back to the floor and says, “Hey, nerd. What did one tectonic plate say to the other when they bump into each other?”

It’s enough to make his gaze flick to her, expression curious. God, she can’t believe she’s going to say this joke. She knows he’s going to appreciate it, based off the ridiculous shirts he always wears, but it’s going to be like admitting _she _finds these puns funny. Oh, well. Peter’s breaking just about almost every one of her walls already. “What?”

“’Sorry, my _fault_.’”

He doesn’t disappoint. There’s a pause, and then he snorts, this really unattractive sound that she _hates_ that she likes.

“That was awful,” she says, because he’s starting to laugh a little too hard now and she can feel the heat rush to her cheeks.

“It was brilliant,” he insists. His mouth is curved into a grin so wide that his eyes are closed, the skin by his eyes crinkling, and she can see every one of his teeth. The sound of his laughter is so nice, she wants to stab it. “MJ, I love you.”

She freezes.

He does too, mid-laughter, his mouth still open, but his eyes are open now, wide and surprised.

Somewhere in the background, someone on the TV screams, but they both ignore it. May’s clattering around in the kitchen, they can hear her humming to herself.

“As a friend?” Michelle says, throat a little closed up. It’s the closest she can get to indifferent.

She’s giving him an out, she knows, because he blurts things out sometimes and they don’t really have to cross this line if they don’t want to, but then he says, “No. Why would I – Why would you think that?” He sounds a little confused.

Her heart bottoms out. She moves her legs to sit on them instead, turning back to the screen. They’ve missed an entire murder scene. “Oh. Okay.”

“Hey, there’s still half a bag of popcorn here, do you want me to bring it out to you guys?” May calls from the kitchen.

Peter doesn’t answer her, so Michelle calls back, “Yes, please,” to avoid looking at him.

When she looks up from the screen, he’s still staring at her. His hands don’t seem to quite know what to do without resting on her legs, and so they’re fluttering back and forth in his lap. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“If I made uncomfortable.”

“Nah, it’s all good, loser,” she says. She doesn’t want to think about this right now. She wants her heart to calm down first, and she wants to finish this documentary with him, and she wants to go home and parse through this entire thing on her own in her room.

“MJ,” he says, and then hesitates. “We’re okay, right?”

“Of course,” she says. She kicks her legs back up into his lap and he smiles.

* * *

May’s birthday is on a Friday this year and Michelle knows she tells Peter she doesn’t want anything big as a celebration, so he asks her if it’s okay to invite a few people over for a dinner instead.

All in all, Michelle knows she doesn’t have many memories of family meals to compare to, but this one’s got to be a strange one, right? Because Peter’s invited over Happy and Ned and herself, and that’s pretty much it.

“You’re all May’s, and my, favourite people,” Peter explains when Michelle walks through his front door and waves at Happy and Ned, already inside. She’s _not_ going to get emotional about being one of May’s favourite people and drops her jacket on the back of the sofa, the way she normally does.

“Morgan?” she questions.

“Mrs Potts and Morgan are out of town, so just us. Look!” he says excitedly, grabbing her wrist to tug her towards the kitchen. “I made dinner for her tonight – I mean, I followed a recipe, so it _should_ be okay—”

May cries when they sit around the table and Peter brings out the spaghetti carbonara he made, but she’s also grinning madly. Sometimes, when Michelle and Peter talk late at night, he will bring up Ben, hesitantly and jaggedly, like he’s not used to it, so she knows that May is his aunt, but by marriage. She knows that, but when May has that big, goofy smile on, it’s hard to look at Peter with the exact same expression and think they’re not blood relatives.

When they finish dinner, the meal filled with laughter in a way Michelle’s never sat through before, May starts stacking up the plates, but Peter stops her.

“We got it, Aunt May,” he insists, puffing his chest out and passing the plates to Ned instead, who salutes her before marching to the kitchen. Michelle stands up to do the same, but Peter shakes his head at her.

“We don’t need three people to doing the washing up,” he says.

“Why’s Happy on his way over there then?” she says, and Peter turns to see Happy already in the doorway of the kitchen, the rest of the plates in his hand.

“Happy! I said I’d do it!”

Michelle hears Happy say, “Kid, I know how to do the washing up—”, and Peter’s sputtering in return, rushing to the sink.

“Loser,” she says, mostly to herself.

“Yep, our loser,” May says in response, laughing. “Our wonderful, sweet, thoughtful, stress-inducing loser. God, he’s the best.”

“Yeah, he is,” Michelle agrees offhandedly, without really thinking. She clamps her lips together when she realises she’s said it out loud, uncomfortable with the way her feelings just fought its way out.

“I really lucked out here, in the nephew department.” May looks relaxed, satisfied with life as she leans back in her chair with a smile. “Sometimes, I’m like, where did this boy even come from?”

Michelle nods, because she doesn’t trust herself to say anything more about him. But she likes hearing May talk about Peter.

“All he wants to do is take care of people, bless his heart. I want to tell him sometimes; shouldn’t it be the other way around? I’m the aunt, I’m supposed to be the one looking after _you_, but he won’t let me.” She leans over to take one of Michelle’s hands, eyes soft. “That’s why I’m glad you’re his girlfriend now – sometimes I want him to be a teenage boy so badly it hurts, because there’s so much responsibility on his shoulders that shouldn’t be there. And he’s lighter around you, enjoys life more – he’s just himself, eighteen years old, around you.”

Michelle blinks once. Twice. Three times, and she’s glad she has a naturally blank expression as her neutral face, because her brain feels like two trains crashing into each other right now.

May squeezes her hand and she squeezes back automatically as a response. It seems to be enough for May though, who stands up and pats Michelle on the shoulder as she heads towards the kitchen in an attempt to pull Happy away from the boys.

Later, when Peter insists on walking her home, he waits until they’re outside her front door before he says, “You’ve been quiet tonight.”

Oddly, this is reminiscent of the time they went ice skating a few months ago and he dropped her home, standing in front of her outside her home the exact same way they’re doing now. She doesn’t look him in the eye when she says, “Peter.”

“Yeah?”

She takes a deep breath. “Why does your aunt think we’re dating?”

There’s a long pause, the silence not really silence because they can hear car horns and a dog barking and someone yelling inside the house opposite.

He says, “Because… We are?”

“No, we’re not.”

“Are we – are you breaking up with me?”

She jerks her head up, startled eyes meeting his hurt ones. “How can I break up with you when we’re not dating?”

“But. But we are,” he says, confused. Any other time, she’d think it’s cute that his eyebrows furrow like that, but she’s as baffled as he is.

“What are you talking about? Since when?”

“Since we went on that date a few months ago?”

“_What_ date?”

“The date! The – the day we went ice skating!” His hands are flying, gesturing wildly. “I asked you out the day before, remember? And you nodded, so we --- Oh, my God.”

He stops suddenly, so still that she looks around wildly for a moment, sure there’s danger.

“Oh, my God,” he says again. “The earplugs. Oh. Oh, no.”

“_What_?”

“The earplugs,” he babbles, and she has no idea what he’s talking about. She opens her mouth to ask again, but then he’s backing away, face stricken.

“What? Peter?”

But he’s shaking his head, ears and face bright red, as he turns away. She blinks after him, because he’s running, faster than she’s ever seen outside of his Spiderman suit.

“Peter!” she calls after him once more, but he’s gone.

_What_?

* * *

Michelle does the first thing she thinks of.

She calls Ned.

He picks up on the first ring, because of course he does. She jumps right into it, no preamble, but Ned never really expects small talk with her anyway.

“I saw you maybe an hour ago, MJ, what’s wrong?”

“Did you know Peter and I are dating?”

There’s a long pause, and then Ned says slowly, “Yeah. Was I not supposed to?”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Well, I assumed you didn’t want to say anything directly to me for a _reason_. I mean, you’re one of my favourite people, but you’re not one of the most forthcoming with your emotions, I figured there was a reason. And, like, Peter has been _really_ careful about the _boyfriend/girlfriend_ title, he said you guys hadn’t really talked about it, and you know him, he’s never going to pressure you into something you’re –”

“I didn’t know we were dating.”

There’s a clatter down the other end of the phone, scuffling like the speaker of the phone scrapes against the carpet, and then more clearly, “_What_?”

“I didn’t know we were dating!” Her voice rises a little, panicked, and she hates how her emotions are leaking into her cool facade. Damnit.

“How can you _not_ know you were dating?”

“I don’t know,” she snaps. “Who else thought we were dating?”

“Everyone!” Ned’s voice is louder too, and she moves the phone away from her ear for a second, trying to calm down her rapidly beating heart. When she brings it back to her ear, he’s still continuing, “—Betty specifically asked me if you were dating, and because Peter told me you were, I said yes. Apparently, it’s a question people wanted an answer to, and Betty wants to go into journalism, you know that, she gives the people what they want. And the Decathlon team has thought you were together for ages, so it wasn’t a big jump – and then Mr Harrington asked me when you and Peter were packing up the chairs at the end of the meet. Literally, _everyone_, because Peter’s not subtle about his affection, he wants people to know that he’s got – well. Not a girlfriend, because, like I said, he didn’t know about labels yet, but he’s not quiet about how much he _likes_ you and that you are his not-girlfriend. Almost girlfriend? Something like that.”

“Ned,” she says, and then nothing else. She wants him to stop for a second.

“Sorry.” He puffs out a long breath. And adds again, “How did you not know you were dating?”

“_I don’t know_,” she repeats. “All I know is that_ I_ found out today because May said so, so I confronted Peter, who was all confused and said we are dating, and I said we’re not. And then he looked all hurt, the way Peter does, but I can’t fix it if I didn’t know what’s going on. Because he said he asked me out months ago, but I can’t remember that, which is ridiculous, because I always remember everything to do with his stupid self and I’d remember being_ asked out_. And then he looked mortified, said something about earplugs, and then_ ran out_.”

She lets out a sigh that Ned can feel miles away, and he winces down the phone. She can _hear_ it. That’s more words than she says in a single day, let alone a single breath. “Fuck.”

“Fuck,” she agrees. “How was I supposed to know we were _dating_?”

There’s another silence.

Ned breaks it by saying, “MJ. Didn’t he say he loves you, like. A few days ago?”

She hangs up on him.

* * *

Spiderman doesn’t turn up at her window that night, which sucks because she thought it might’ve been easier if he did. She sends him a text, once she’s processed her thoughts some more after her phone call with Ned, just saying “Peter?”, but he opens it and doesn’t reply.

(It gives her the same vibes from sophomore year when she’d text him repeatedly and he always left her on _read_.)

The next day, she’s knocking at his front door. When it opens, he takes one look at her and then closes it again.

“Peter, open up!” she says through gritted teeth.

“I don’t want to,” he calls back.

“We need to talk!”

“Um, I don’t think we do!”

She slams her hand against the closed door again. “Do you not think that I’ll bust this door down? Because I will. You know I will.”

The door opens again, and Peter’s standing there, looking sheepish. He’s wearing one of her t-shirts, which she’s _not_ going to focus on right now. Bigger fish to fry. “We really don’t have to talk about this.”

She ignores him and steps inside, closing the door behind her. “We most definitely do.”

Peter still looks like he wants to be anywhere other than here, doing this, but tough luck. So does she. She’d rather sit all her finals right now than be standing here, trying to talk about _feelings_, but they have to. They have to.

They stand in silence for a moment, and then she says, “You thought we were dating.”

“Um,” he says.

“Explain.”

“I asked you out on the subway after practice all those months ago,” he says, shifting from one foot to the other. “The day we were talking about a zombie apocalypse. And I asked if you wanted to go on a date with me the next day after school, and you were nodding, so I thought.” He pauses, embarrassed. “I didn’t realise you were just listening to the song through the earplug. And I guess the train was really loud. Uh.”

“I didn’t hear you,” she says, mostly to say something and also to confirm. He looks stressed.

He winces.

“For the record, I would have said yes. If I _did_ hear you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” She leans back against the door, shoulders shrugging. “I called Ned. Apparently, I’m the only one who didn’t know we were dating.”

“Sorry,” he says, because it’s an automatic response, but she knows he means it. For whatever reason. “I just. It’s been months. How could you not know?”

“You never called me your girlfriend,” she says defensive.

“I thought you didn’t like labels!”

“And you never kissed me.”

“I was trying to respect your boundaries. That one time, when I was being Spiderman, I was _going_ to kiss you, but you said I should go home, so I thought you weren’t ready,” he explains. She remembers. She wants to slam her head backwards into the door, but she doesn’t think he’d let her. “I kiss you on the cheek all the time!”

“You’re a tactile person, loser,” she says, but the argument sounds a little weak now, in the face of everything happening.

“MJ,” he says seriously, and it makes her stop. “Did you really not notice how much I liked you?”

She swallows. “I thought – I thought I was looking into it.”

He shakes his head. “You’re, like, my favourite person. With May and Ned. A three-way tie, but you pull ahead maybe a little.”

Looking down, she adds, “Maybe I’m a little scared. I haven’t – I’m not. I don’t know. I thought I _wanted_ you to like me and I was making all this stuff up in my head. I didn’t want to lose one of my best friends.”

She doesn’t look back up because it’s all a little too vulnerable for her liking. She’s admitting something here. Even though she’s 100% sure that he likes her at this point, that he’s probably in love with her, admitting things still make her want to retreat back to her bed, alone.

He takes a step closer, and she knows because she can see his sock-covered feet move towards her. They’re different colours, one bright red and the other blue. “Can I touch your face?”

She nods, then feels his fingers trace along her jaw, cupping her cheek. He tilts her head so she looks at him.

“I meant what I said when I said I love you,” he tells her. She can feel her heart stuttering, stopping and starting without her control. “MJ, I’m _in_ love with you.”

She kisses him, and that’s something important in itself. She’s the one who leans forward to press her lips against his, heart hammering, trying to press everything she means into it – all these months where she thought she was pining, and he thought she was being a little cold. He kisses her back, and she can’t believe she was afraid of this – there’s nothing frightening about kissing Peter Parker, not when it warms her right to the toes.

She pulls back and rests her forehead against his, trying to catch her breath. “I really, _really_ like you. And I really want to date you, properly.”

He grins at her. Did she think she couldn’t look at the sun directly in case of being blinded? She doesn’t ever want to stop looking at Peter. “Yeah?”

“I won’t be good at it,” she warns him, because he’s looking at her in awe.

“Nah, I’ve been dating you for months, you’re perfect.”

She feels the heat rise to her face, so she kisses him again before he can see and comment on it. This time, she lets her arms loop around his neck, one of her hands trailing down the back of his shoulders, as she deepens the kiss, slipping her tongue against the roof his mouth. He makes a noise and she swallows it, eyes falling shut. Without realising, he’s got her pressed against the door, and she only knows because she can feel it against her back. God, to think she could’ve been doing this this whole time.

* * *

“I hate you both, you’re ridiculous,” Ned says cheerfully at school. “It’s like. Fake-dating, but not. Because everyone knew, except for _one_ of you.”

“Just because I’m his girlfriend now doesn’t mean I still can’t kill you,” Michelle says, but Ned shakes his head.

“Nope, I’m not afraid of you. I heard you panic down the phone about Peter.” He winces when she scuffs him around the back of the head. “Mm, okay, maybe still a little afraid.”

“You were panicking about me? Aw, babe,” Peter says, so she scuffs him on the head too. “Hey!”

“Just because I’m your girlfriend now doesn’t mean I still won’t kill you either.”

“My _girlfriend_,” he repeats, and it’s hard to act irritated when he’s all giddy like this. “I get to call you my _girlfriend_.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Ned says again, but he side-eyes her as well to let her know he means them both. She’s inclined to agree, because her boyfriend is still bouncing on the balls of his feet and she says_ fuck it_, places a hand against his cheek and leans him to kiss him. She can hear Ned sighing fondly, but Peter’s malleable under her hand so it’s hard to focus on anything other than him. Her _boyfriend_.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [so tell me you love me the way i love you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24689884) by [magnetichearts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetichearts/pseuds/magnetichearts)


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